Google going where no search engine has gone

NEW DELHI: Google search guru Amit Singhal believes the search-engine of the future will be “a perfect personal assistant” — knowing what you want, when you want it. Although people can travel to the moon’s surface without leaving their armchairs, search-engine developments so far are just “baby steps” to “the holy grail of search”, Singhal told AFP in a rare interview. Singhal, 44, has already brought transformational change to the Internet since he took over development of Google’s search engine in 2000, when the web was still relatively limited and access achingly slow. The “Google fellow” — the title the California company bestows on its top thinkers — sees a world of “knowledge on demand” before people even know they want it, as speech recognition, language understanding, touch technology and computer advances combine. The search engine of the future will be the “perfect personal assistant giving you benefit of all technical knowledge, enhancing your thought processes”, he said. Singhal dismisses criticism by some scientists that having all the information at people’s fingertips could create lazy minds, shortening attention spans and reducing capacity to remember information. “People always worry about change,” he said. “We have to teach people to swim with the flow of technology, not swim against it,” he said.